With 36 days until the presidential election, I'm delighted to introduce Firsthand, a project that uses all the tools at our disposal to expand the conversation, puts the spotlight on what really matters most in people's lives and allows you to share the ideas and images that tell the story of our country during this campaign season, as you see it. Every month, drawing on reader input, we will ask a broad question -- for example, how a certain challenge or trend is affecting your community. Using HuffPost's platform, you'll then be able to share your response. It might be an Instagram photo with two sentences of explanatory text; a brief video clip; or a scan of a flyer that is landing on car windshields in your neighborhood. The result will be a vivid multimedia mosaic that captures the everyday events that are a testament to the changes underway in American communities.

We are looking to the candidates who wish to be our nation's next president to tell us, the American people, how they are going to fix the housing crisis and restore our economy. It's time they speak out.

Less than 80 days away from the 2012 presidential election, we face a unique moment in time. We have an opportunity to stand up for underwater homeowners across America -- and in so doing, fix the housing crisis and save the economy.

Housing and foreclosures have been largely absent from the political debate, but they're about to break through in a big way. Battleground states like Nevada, Florida, Ohio, Colorado, Wisconsin, and North Carolina have been among the hardest hit by the housing crisis.

Edward J. DeMarco, the head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), has announced that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac will not offer principal reductions as an option to prevent foreclosures on the loans they guarantee.

Ever since the housing bubble collapsed, the Federal government has refused to take major initiatives to help underwater homeowners. As a result, we are likely to see close to one million foreclosures both this year and next, with the numbers only gradually slipping back to normal levels by the end of the decade.

You may have noticed news items that a company called Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) is proposing to have strapped localities use the public power of eminent domain to deal with the problem of underwater mortgages.

There's a couple in my community where the 6-foot-2-inch woman, a former model, towers over her 5-foot-4-inch businessman husband. As a less-than-kind observer noted: The husband may appear much taller when he stands on his stacks of money. (I did say less-than-kind, right?)